One of the consequences of the budget limit for all teams has been the need to prioritize the areas of development that give the most benefits.
Traditionally, front wings and their endplates were one of the main focuses of attention when teams were trying to find performance.
Pat Fry , Alpine’s technical director, states that a new floor design costs a team about the same as a new front wing, but the former now provides a much more significant return on investment money.
As for the potential cost of a new front wing, he said: “When you’ve already invested in it, you’ve spent, I don’t know, about $700,000, when you’ve gone through the whole process, when you’ve done all that And you have to find as much performance as you do with the ground.”
“And clearly with a flat bottom now you’re finding ten times as much [in terms of performance] right now. Obviously we’re also limited by resources. So it’s easier for us to put them on a ground upgrade than a front wing, which is relatively small.
Fry stressed that there are still big benefits to be gained from the floors as teams learn more about their 2022 cars.
“I think it’s the same for everyone,” he explained. “It’s a ground and I guess it’s also] an upper body way to energize the ground side, to work up close.”
“The front wings are a little less responsive than they used to be, there used to be a lot of performance in the wings.”
“We have changes to the front wing on the way, but a front wing is quite an expensive component to manufacture, so you have to earn your money.”
“The front wing is about the same cost as a floor. And at the moment, I’m finding 10 times more performance on the floor. So I’m going to keep doing it.”
Fry says all teams have to figure out where to best spend their limited funds while trying to stay within the budget cap.
“It’s a balance. Years ago, we had a cost performance chart, even when I was at Ferrari, but that was to prevent us from doing wildly expensive crazy things.
“It’s not that we were limited financially, but you have to control the resources and you have to do things.”
“So it’s a balance, as well as cost, it’s what we can physically produce. And I guess we can always get more stuff out, but that comes at an even higher cost. So it’s just a balancing act.”
“And I think every team will have a performance cost, as I call it. So you have an idea of the cost of a component and how many downforce points you need to find to make it sensible.
Alpine have opted for regular updates , rather than a major package every now and then, and the Barcelona package includes some mods to the front wing, while keeping an eye on flat-bottom updates to come.
“Indeed, there are some details in the design of the front wing endplate, some minor things on the ground, and the rear wing and rear brake ducts are mainly the new things that we have brought here,” said Fry.
“The rear wing is for the level of downforce that is needed here and obviously at Monaco. The rear brake ducts are a development we have been working on.”
